LITTLE ROCK — Emon Mahoney, the least experienced member of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, has got Arkansas' turkey problems all figured out.
In only his second meeting as a member of the commission, Mahoney has determined that fall turkey hunters have caused the recent decline in our turkey population. Losing the 500 or so birds that hunters legally kill in the fall has so devastated our statewide flock that Mahoney proposed closing the 2009 fall turkey season at the commission's meeting Aug. 21.
The commission will vote on Mahoney's proposal at its next meeting Sept. 24, just seven days before the beginning of the statewide archery turkey season. To the hunters who have scheduled time off to enjoy a crisp October morning to hunt turkeys with a bow, to those who want a traditional wild turkey dinner for Thanksgiving or Christmas: Take a hike. You're now pariahs in the eyes of at least one commissioner, and just three more votes away from officially being ostracized by the entire agency.
Never mind the fact that dates, limits and regulations for the 2009-2010 fall turkey season already have been published in the AGFC's regulations digest, available now at a sporting goods dealer near you. Get yours today so you can show it to the judge when you get ticketed for hunting in a season you didn't know had been abruptly closed just one week before it was to open.
This all started several weeks ago when Rick Evans, a former commissioner, wrote a letter beseeching the current commission to reinstate key turkey management practices of the 1990s. One element of that system was closing the fall turkey seasons, which the commission did from 1996-2001.
Mahoney could have avoided this controversy altogether by simply framing the issue rationally instead of politically. The only aspect of turkey management that the commission can influence is the human element, namely hunting, and to a lesser degree, poaching. In that light, it would be difficult to argue against closing the 2010 fall archery and gun turkey seasons to preserve the fall component of the annual harvest. That approach would have been logical, and the only debatable issue would have been the necessity and fairness of eliminating that particular hunting opportunity.
Instead, Mahoney went a step further at the commission's informal briefing Aug. 20 by accusing hunters, without proof, of killing the bulk of fall turkeys while hunting deer over corn. He also asserted that archers kill a lot of turkeys that they never recover. Many people do believe that, but there's no hard evidence, which reduces the theory to hearsay.
He also insisted that hunters don't check the majority of turkeys they kill in the fall. Many sportsmen believe that assumption, as well. But without evidence to support it, it does not rise above the level of coffeeshop gossip. Even if true, those people would kill turkeys in the fall whether the season is open or not. It has nothing to do with the hunters who check their turkeys legally. It's the same tactic authoritarians use to assault Second Amendment rights, to use the misdeeds of criminals to diminish the rights of law-abiding gun owners.
Furthermore, Mahoney also spent considerable effort denigrating the integrity of Mike Widner, the AGFC's turkey biologist. He attempted to discredit Widner's data compiled over a career that spans nearly three decades, his methodology and the validity of his work in general. At one point, Mahoney declared that he would not even turn around to look at Widner while Widner answered one of his questions because he had nothing to say worth hearing.
It was the most brutal verbal flogging of a distinguished and respected professional that I have ever witnessed.
Mahoney then lit into Commissioner George Dunklin, who has been active in Ducks Unlimited for many years, over some slight that Ducks Unlimited inflicted on Mahoney 20 years ago regarding an aborted donation.
The commission represents all Arkansas sportsmen. To blame a depressed turkey economy on one group of license-buying constituents who have hunted legally within a season prescribed by a peer-reviewed turkey management plan is irresponsible and patently unfair.
It is appropriate to reconsider fall turkey hunting in its present structure, in light of our declining turkey population. But closing a season one week before it starts suggests an emergency -one that does not exist. Demonizing one class of sportsmen as the cause of a manufactured emergency is the kind of political mischief that Amendment 35 to the Arkansas Constitution was designed to eliminate.
Sports, Pages 29 on 08/30/2009